America's First Gay Bar

Celebrate Poe

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This is episode 249 - America’s First Gay Bar
While the word gay certainly wasn’t used to connote same sex attraction during Walt Whitman’s lifetime, Whitman DID patronize an establishment at 647 Broadway that today might be considered a gay bar. And that drinking establishment was known as Pfaff’s - spelled PFAFFs. I have even heard a Whitman scholar compare Pfaff’s to the disco bar Studio 54.
In fact, Whitman even wrote a brief poem about the bar in his 1861 poem, The Two Vaults:
The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway
As the dead in their graves are underfoot hidden
And the living pass over them, recking not of them,
Laugh on laughers!
Drink on drinkers!
Bandy the jest!
Toss the theme from one to another!
Beam up—Brighten up, bright eyes of beautiful young men!
The important thing is that Pfaff's provided a welcoming and encouraging place where Whitman could grow in a creative manner when he needed it the most.